User blog:SploderianRich/Jingo Legends Act 1 Review
Ah, Jingo Legends Act 1..... Ah... *Graphics - Now I do have to say the art style for the game is splendid. Its art is not like any other Sploder Series game, and that's good! The art style is drastically improved over the first 2 games. Drastically. And I say that because Jingo 1 & 2 weren't the most aesthetically pleasing. Graphics could be messy. Thankfully, most of the graphics have been revamped for this installment. You can thank many enemy graphics to me. :) However, not all graphics have been revamped, and you can see that. Jingo has an all new gorgeous look but Pim keeps his old look? I get if Supersonic didn't want to bother DWID to make new graphics, but.. meh.. The backgrounds are certainly better. I really enjoy it. Supersonic utilized the texture creator textures and the PPG textures magnificently, and they give the game some charm. *Music - The music is refreshing and most suit the levels in which they appear. Though, I did find "Outasight" a bit out of place in the Mini boss level, with all those bombs shooting at you. Ah, yes, the bombs, but that's a whole different category. *Plot - This game is set 3 years after Jingo 2. Normally, timeskips like this in movies or shows would bother me, but it doesn't really here. Anyways, Pim is imprisoned (that's a rare sight) and Icero is, well, dead. Icero go bye bye. Jingo must investigate. In Level 8, you meet a guy who looks like he could be from Cube Fighters and you go in a portal thing, I guess? Then you're in the Matrix and you gotta get out? The end of the act is confusing, but the beginning is pretty solid, so it gets a good score here. *Gameplay: Level 3 - So Jingo operates kinda like he did before. He's got his staff that he can throw. Sometimes, I feel llike the staff is too limited, that it's too close-range. Jingo's sprite is big, so it's often hard to see what enemies are up ahead. I just wish the staff was more suited for this. Expanding on that, this is not a fast-paced level. There will always be enemies up ahead. This isn't something necessarily bad. Jingo's jump is fairly alright. Apparently, from Mangamixer's playthrough, Jingo can double jump? Yeah, how do you do that? My lack of knowledge of the double jump would cause me trouble in the next levels of the game... Anyways, the level design is pretty alright, with nothing rage-inducing. There are areas where you'll have to wall jump, but that can get annoying sometimes and you'll keep needing to mash buttons. *Gameplay: Level 4 - Let me be frank, this level is just hard. This level ultimately suffers from a fatal flaw: spawnable enemies. Not to mention you only have one life. In the last level, you only had one life but at least that level had a 1-up. This level is certainly challenging. Challenge can be a good thing, but it's only the second level and we're already seeing the Nintendo Hard aspect of Jingo Legends. It's a OHKO environment here, folks, and you WILL die, at one point or another. The spawnable enemies we're talking about are bombs, and they are relentless. The worst offenders are the small ones, which spawn quick. Supersonic72 quick. Bombs are everywhere. This is really not a fast-paced level. You always have to time everything correctly. You have to make multiple trips back and forth in this level, making the already frustrating bombs even more annoying. There's a section where you have to wall jump to get to a higher platform, but there's a small bomb spawning right next to that, so if you don't time your jump correctly, you are going to DIE. I suppose it's not the hardest Sploder Series game level ever (taking the first Skyward game into account), but I just wish the difficulty of this level was more controlled. *Gameplay: Level 5 - Now, we're in a plains level next to a volcano. It's not that bad, but there are spawnable enemies. But instead of bombs, there are spikes, but thank god they aren't everywhere. As with Level 5, you have to time yourself. You have to get a flame core item, which lets you get in the volcano. There's really not much to say about this level. This level's not that bad, but you can see it took some lessons from Level 4. *Gameplay: Level 6 - Not a particularly interesting level. Level design is okay, and nothing's hard. That moonwalking enemy FTW. Also, JUMPAEMON PLUSHIE SHALL BURN IN HELL. *Gameplay: Level 7 - Okay, this is a bad level if you don't know what you're doing. You have to fight a Robomecha I boss, and guess what the spawnable bombs return. But don't worry, there's only one of them. Anyways, you have to shoot up at Robomecha I while he and the bombs move around like baddies. There's a convenient 1-up which you'll HAVE to get. It's pretty annoying to shoot at the boss, because he uses a switcher and the bomb sometimes gets in the way and tries to blast you into oblivion. There are 3 platforms. It's not a good option to attack him on the middle one. The boss is more likely to go left, however the bombs can get you on the far left. The boss rarely goes to the right, however the bombs will never spawn to the far right. I found myself more satisfied standing on the left platform. *Gameplay: Level 8 - So now we're in a desert with a Cube Fighters guy. Can I just mention how awesome that desert texture is? This level is pretty cool, it's got slopes, springs, and, uh, portals. Yeah. *Gameplay: Level 9 - You know how in most games, Level 9 is just something like an Outro level and not a playable level? Yeah, it doesn't work like that here. You've gone through the portal and now you're in a place called The Void. This level frustrated me. It wasn't necessarily the level's fault. So, everyday, I'm required to close the computer by 8 PM. I was on this level at about 7:50, and I really wanted to beat this level so I wouldn't have to try to beat the game the next day (tomorrow), because I didn't want to have to go through that FRICKIN LEVEL 4 again. It really didn't help that Level 9 is a playable level and not just an outro level. In this level, Jingo uses magnet magic and you must press space to turn it on and off. You use the magnet magic to stick on to gravity blocks. But I could never get the pattern down. What did frustrate me about the level was SPIKES, which were near gravity blocks. I had lots of trouble with the magnet magic thing and if I messed up, I could get killed by spikes. So there I was, rushing to beat the game by 8. I managed to beat the level and my work here was done. *Thoughts - Jingo Legends Act 1 is NOT a bad game, by any means. It's just a relentlessly difficult one. The game was unbalanced in its difficulty, with Level 3 being a walk in the park and Level 4 being a walk in the Devil's Den. Yeah... Jingo Legends Act 1 gets a 6/10. Wow, I typed up a lot. Category:Blog posts